"It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong." ~ George Soros

Drifting Away from 2015 (a re-cap of my trading year)

2015 reminds me of 2013.

Strong start, and possibly weak finish. These kind of moves tell you that there are deep implications that may kill the market further in the future. Market held 6600, and is trying to bounce 7200-7300 but then what next? Not unless we take out 7550 and eat 7800 with conviction, that’s the only time this market will be interesting again.

If you plot every potential catalyst, probabilities are heavily skewed to the negative. So don’t be to eager.

Take a look at the performances of some of these equity funds. Most of them are bleeding already.. wait till you see more panic abroad till the contagion hits all of em and redemption goes rampant.

I’m not saying this will happen immediately. But I really believe more pain will come in the following months.. I also think 2016 will be a very difficult year for the average investor. Best thing is to focus on other profitable avenues such as starting your business.

How I attacked this kind of market

at the start of the year my port looked somewhat like this

I positioned in MAXS + SSI since they still looked good back then + they had interesting stories.

At one point I even tried to fool myself and become a fundamental investor

Why I don’t give a f*ck about noise

I base all of my trading decisions mainly on my technical screen. I look at fundamentals, hear out rumors, listen to tipsbut I don’t really care about any of those if they don’t pass my technical criteria.

Here’s an example…

I’ve been hearing, seeing tons of information about this stock.. and what’s funny is if you were the typical investor you’d already be hyped by all the fuzz.. but look at the last 10 candles before it gapped down.. it was never able to go above the 50 day Moving average or even the 20 day (these are just basic indications of weakness).

Condolences.

My philosophy is simple:

Whatever information–whether fundamentals, rumors, tips, insider–you have will only be valuable if the market acts on that proposition.

In other words, even if you have all the connections, and even if you have the tips of the number 1 analyst in the world. It will all be useless if the only one acting on that information is YOU. If there really is magic in a stock, there should be an impact in the demand & supply showing you signs (no matter how subtle) that there is “something” going on in that stock.

Reminiscing

when the broad market started to weaken, I decide to go back to becoming ruthless. What’s interesting in the weak phases of the market is that’s where you really see whether you have what it takes to make money in the most challenging periods.

1st circle: failure to re-take 8000

2nd circle: Confirmation, support turned resistance– failure to re-take 7800, by this point most blue chips already sucked.

I’ve designed my strategy to identify potential plays as early as possible. That’s when I buy, not when you see noise all around as if you’re being given a free gold mine. (the more obvious something is, the less opportunity.)

Here are some of the plays I fortunately found this year:

Pardon the screenies, but this is what I found in my files

Tapet , PXP

these were the early days..

I wonder why there was no noise back when this was doing 4.00 lol..

FNI

This was the first bottom around 1.17.. Some of the best technical set ups appear when everyone in FB / forums are crying. That’s exactly what happened in this trade.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between “Noise or Fish Enthusiasm” vs “Stock Market Returns“

this FNI bounce play will be memorable for me because I was on the beach with a special someone while taking this trade. Imagine that, making money while enjoying life.

Awesome Memory.

Most of my other plays I usually post in my blogs, or in my FB.

DD

too bad wasn’t able to hold this all the way tho. hehe

FED

YEHEY

I mean it when I say I like to find things early.

If the play is strong, my only focus is on that play till I milk it to the end.

I keep focus fire on that stock and stick with it, until I see no more upside. This is where I become a punter. I swing the stock for as many times as I can as long as I feel that it still has fire in it.

2GO

This is my favorite stock. Been here since the early days. I remember a good old friend of mine called this stock “puGO” back when it was doing 2.00 bucks. hehe. 🙂

Sold then bought back

These are just some of my trades. I have lots of quick trades, minor bounces, day trades etc.. but I don’t usually put much focus on set ups that only give me 5-10% upside. I realize that I’m more of a win big type of player than a rinse and repeat quantity trader. I prefer to sit patiently and wait for potential big moves. I like trading plays that give me 20% or more.

Like any other trader I commit lots of small errors, I proudly incur many 3-5% or even 8-10% losses. Doesn’t matter.

Here are some of my losses this year. 🙂

I appreciate losses because they enable me to step back and learn further–refine myself. I never hesitate admiting mistakes. I never bitch about it, once you get scared of losing money that’s the end of your career in trading.

It’s all part of the probability game. When I get it right though, I make sure that my bullets are really concentrated on that play.

The way I outperform:

Be humble when mistaken, and be overly aggressive when proven correct.

I think the Sept-Oct will be deadly. I’d be on the sides waiting for extreme reactions that I can take advantage off. My strategy is to play tighter in the next few months, ONLY going in when the probabilities are really really high. Like what I’ve been doing for the whole year.. the game is all about finding outliers. If the market fails to take out 7600-7800 then it’s good as shit for me.

This is also a good opportunity for me to start shifting my efforts and capital towards other endeavors, am working on several start-ups as of the moment. The market has been a good stepping stone.. now it’s time to pay back and create real value in this world. 🙂